Well, the day finally arrived…SUMMER VACATION!! And this one is like nothing I’ve ever done before. Two and a half months of fast travel. Usually I get a housesit in one location and hang there for the majority of the summer, then meet Brian somewhere and we fast travel for 7-10 days. But I wanted to mix it up a bit this year…
It started as all of my travels do, with a housesit. I saw a cat sit in Dublin for 10 days. Easy! Applied, got it, and started looking for other sits to work around it. I landed one on the French Riviera, near Nice, for 4 days with a ferret. Next up, two weeks in Switzerland with a cat. Then, the ICEing on the cake, a two week sit in Reykjavik, Iceland with a cat (sort of- there’s someone else here to take care of it if I want to leave and explore for a couple of days). I will say this- NONE of these were places I was thinking, “Oh! I want to go there this summer!”. A sit pops up in a place I’ve never been, I apply, if I get it, I’m there. 🙂
After I had these 4 sits in place, I started working out my schedule around them. After Iceland, I decided to head to Scotland for a couple of weeks to research and film for a Scottish Mythistory class I want to do. Then I’d go to Dublin, do my sit, head to Cork for a few days after that to explore. Then, back to Dublin to fly to Nice for my sit on the French Riviera. Then off to meet Brian in Malta for a few days of exploring. We’d then fly to Rome (cheaper return flight for him, even though I was there last summer), explore for a couple of days. He’d head home, I’d fly to somewhere to be determined for 10 or so days (I was hoping I could find a sit to fit those dates), then I’d be off to Switzerland for my housesit. From there, I’d fly to Spain to visit a friend for a few days and then fly home. I had everywhere set and booked except for those 10 days after Rome. Then the Dublin lady cancelled the sit. GRRRRRRRR! It happens, gotta roll with it. I already had flights in and out of Dublin, so I just extended my trip to include some time in Belfast and see more of the country and sought out super cheap AirBNBs. And then I finally figured out what to do with those spare 10 days- I’ll do a solo driving tour of Romania! Whew! This will be a summer to remember (and with my crappy memory, a summer to blog as well!!). And packing was a CHALLENGE with all of these varied climates (ski pants to sun dresses!), 2.5 months, budget airlines with serious baggage restrictions, and my obsession with only using carry on…I’m working on a post just about the packing adventure!
Flight to Iceland was on WOW Airlines. CHEAP from LAX. Like $200, plus $50 because I want to carry my luggage on rather than check it. WOW is a bare bones budget airline. They don’t even give you water. No in flight entertainment. You get a seat, a seat belt, a barf bag, and restroom access (which I was happy to see didn’t have a coin slot!). Leg room was really good- better than most flights I’ve been on lately. I was THRILLED when no one sat in my row! The 9 hour flight left at 7pm. I took my ZZZZ quils, and <del>slept</del> changed positions every 20 minutes while dozing. I am convinced that the management at WOW went to whoever made the plane and said, “We’ll pay extra for you to put torture devices in any area that might possibly allow a passenger to get comfortable while sleeping.” Seriously, no matter what position I was in, some hard piece of plastic or metal was jabbing me. I’ll shut up with my complaining now.
Woke up to an announcement that we would be landing in 30 minutes, almost an hour ahead of schedule. I looked outside to see ocean and clouds. A very cold ocean. My least favorite type of ocean. See, I don’t do cold. Cold to me is anything below 70 F. Iceland highs would be in the high 40s, low 50s. Iceland, indeed. A few moments later, I saw land. Wow.
We got off the plane and boarded buses to go to the terminal. It was chilly, gray, and drizzly out, but I was dressed appropriately in thermal layer shirts, a big puffy jacket, and ski pants (yes, i wore ski pants on the plane! Don’t judge! I am all about comfort over fashion!). Easy breezy through customs, they didn’t even look at me. Just stamped and sent me on my way. Found the Grey Line Tour people, walked outside and boarded the bus. I swear to god that the guy who took my ticket is a direct descendant of Erik the Red. This guy looked exactly how you would expect a Viking to look! Except he was in a raincoat and waterproof pants. 😉 I was excited to see the scenery for the next 45 minutes, except I promptly fell asleep and didn’t wake up until we got to Reykjavik and I had to change buses! There were only a few people in the minivan with me, and they all got off first. It was just me and the driver for the last few minutes. He’s from London, been here 40 years, his wife is Icelandic. He said I only need to know 2 things about Iceland: It’s always raining and it’s expensive!! LOL I don’t think the Iceland Tourism Board will be hiring him anytime soon, but he was lovely to talk to and we had a few laughs!
He dropped me off in the aforementioned rain. I had to walk about 10 minutes to my housesit. No problem with Google Maps (which is usually trying to kill me, but somehow managed to take me directly to my destination this time- I think it’s hoping I’ll let down my guard so it can ambush me on car rental day…). The house is just LOVELY!! Simple, clean, cute, with a very friendly cat. I quickly unpacked and got ready to go get groceries. I was STARVING. And I had to prepare myself- I had heard horror stories about just how expensive Iceland is. Like mortgage your house to eat a hamburger in a restaurant expensive. So 99.9% of all of my meals will be homemade, plus I brought along 3 lbs of pepperoni sticks just in case! I walked to Bonus, which is the discount grocery store of Iceland and is about half a mile from here or less. It was still drizzly, but with all of my layers I was warm. I’m in the Old West Side part of town- the very touristy spot. You know it’s touristy when you turn the corner and see Hard Rock Cafe. 😉 The best part is that I’m literally within walking distance of practically everything I want to see in Reykjavik! Easily found the store and started shopping. The store was small (by US standards), but the selection was good. Most things were in Icelandic and I just had to go by the pictures, but that was easy enough. The prices for things like bread and peanut butter and jam and crackers and pasta and such weren’t really all that bad! Very comparable to LA prices. But the meat. Good lord, if I lived here I’d be a vegetarian!! It is SOOOOOOOO expensive! Like a normal size pack of bacon, about a pound of it, was $20!!! Um, no thanks! Same with small packs of chicken breasts and such. Even frozen fish sticks were like $14 for a medium sized bag. I did break down and buy a very small (less than 8oz I’d say) pack of chicken lunch meat for $4. Ouch. So here’s my haul:
2 Salami Frozen Pizzas
1 Big Bag of Penne Pasta (several meals)
1 2-pack Frozen Garlic Baguette
1 Peanut Butter
1 Jam
1 Big loaf of Bread
1 Big bag of frozen veggies
1 Very small Chicken (I think) lunch meat pack
3 cans of tuna (pricey at over $2 a can, but a little bigger than normal cans and good protein)
1 tub of mayonaisse
1 jar of pasta sauce
3 packs of Ramen noodles
2 packs of flavored crackers
1 pack of butter (at least I think it’s butter- it’s all in Icelandic, but the package looks like a butter package…)
1 2-pack of toothpaste (it was cheaper than buying just one tube, go figure)
1 5 pack of chocolate/granola/fruit/nut bars
1 pack of those tasty milk chocolate biscuits (cookies) I always get in Europe
1 3 pack of Cup a Soup
Grand total? 5,685 ISK = $54 US. Honestly, no where near as bad as I was expecting, and this should last me for about a week. Knowing that a fast food hamburger at McDonald’s here is like $15, I’d say I scored.
Came back, made a sandwich, and watched some YouTube while waiting for Brian to video chat. The 13 minute You Tube video wasn’t even over before I fell asleep- for like 4 hours!!!! And I didn’t even move once! I woke up to about a zillion messages from Brian who was convinced I had frozen to death or something. Made myself a dinner of Ramen with some of my frozen veggies in it (hey, I gotta get some kind of nutrition out of that junk!). Sat down to plot out my adventures for tomorrow and blog. I am so far pleasantly surprised that Iceland isn’t as cold as I thought it was (because I actually prepared for Arctic Tundra Death) and food isn’t going to max out my credit cards. 🙂 It’s now 10:30pm. This is the view from my room right now. Yep, sun is still out. Sunset is at 11:15pm and sunrise is at…get this…3:30am!!! Yep, only 4 hours of darkness this time of year. Glad I brought my sleep mask.
